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Gabriel

Greendale Middle School, Wisconsin

I was bullied in most of the schools I went to in elementary school. 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade to be specific. Although I don’t know why I can tell you that it has changed who I am as a person and I wouldn’t be myself if it didn’t happen.

In elementary school, I was probably the weirdest kid there. I would always talk about how I could make potions and how they could give my friends superpowers, among other things. I would also go on and on about how cool my birthday party was going to be and how many people I invited to them. Well, you read the title and see how well that turned out. Turns out that people don’t like weird kids and the people I thought were my friends ended up turning on me in third grade. What's unique about my situation is it was always the people who I thought liked me who hated me the most. After that, I switched schools and I stopped being so outward with people. I turned to video games to find comfort in fiction, surrounding myself with impossible realities hoping that somehow I could be transported there and forget about the responsibilities that came with fourth grade. I made fewer friends and became more and more involved in the gaming scene. Although I wasn’t very good at video games, I still played them. Fifth grade rolled around, and I switched schools once again. At the start of the year, I tried having a large group of friends, but that backfired quickly. They ended up dropping me because they thought I was, you guessed it, weird. After that, I stopped desiring large groups of friends and stuck with a guy friend for the rest of the year.
Overall I think that I’ve become a worthless shell of my former self, with virtually no friends besides the ones I’ve amassed online. I refuse to share my identity with people or tell them about my interests. I don’t do anything but do my school work and play video games. Now it might sound like I am withholding blame and placing it upon myself, but I am not. I do not wish to blame myself or others for actions they did not know hurt me or how the action may have affected me. They were children, immature and ignorant. But I can’t say that I don’t hate myself a little. Even though the situations I dealt with were difficult for someone my age. I wish I could have done something better or at least confided in the people I knew who would have supported me. But a wish is just a wish; I can do nothing about it. The past cannot change by wishful thinking, so it is best to learn from mistakes I have made in the past.What I can say is that I’m thankful for the things and the people I’ve had and have now. Although I wasn’t happy then, I’m happy now, and that’s all that matters.

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